market why not. find out what's really happening to the global economy with much stronger or a no holds barred look at the global financial headlines tune in to this report on our. own citizens are kept away from the from the voting booth by rules that are meant to keep away a certain segment of the population in less than a month americans head to the polls to elect a president who will everyone's votes be counted r t looks at the double standards taking place around the country when it comes to denying voters their rights to cast ballots. and there were fireworks during last night's vice presidential debate between joe biden and paul ryan but when it comes to the topic of iran and nuclear weapons how far apart are these two parties and which party is more likely to start

another war in the middle east will question more. and it's october here in d.c. and hometown baseball teams are making a run for the playoffs when the washington nationals came to the district they got a new taxpayer funded stadium but how taxpayers lost money on the stadium deal will investigate. it's friday october twelfth five pm in washington d.c. lopez if you're watching r t. all right leading the news this hour we are t. minus twenty five days until the november presidential elections and the candidate who is leading the race depends on who you ask some polls put president obama up by a few points other show mitt romney edging ahead and some indicate that the two men are virtually neck and neck now this has pundits declaring that this election could come down to a photo finish so this is further proof that each and every float counts now we've

already seen some interesting tactics some part of the democrats and republicans in changing the voting system you could call it a way to level the playing field when it comes to voter fraud or a ploy to sway the election the problem is that each state and sometimes each individual county has a different set of rules and while those double standards might not guarantee a winner they are sure creating a lot of confusion and possibly widening the margin for error r t correspondent on a saucy a charkha tells us more. you elected me to tell you the truth honesty is the best policy while maybe not in u.s. elections two words define why people hate america double standard on everything this presidential election season these two words are back in full swing the basic definition of a double standard is a rule or principle unfairly applied in different ways to different people or

groups let's find out if this is relevant to the us election system respecting every single vote is key in a democracy yet voter suppression is alive and well in the us given the way that citizens are kept away from the from the voting booths by rules that are meant to keep away a certain segment of the population we have a lot of nerve frankly criticizing other countries for the way they run their democracy from questionable voter id regulations to shortened early voting time slots to gerrymandering were rigged drawing congressional district lines to favor certain parties laws affecting voters rights are passed left and right and vary state by state to have an eric holder this video shows how easy it is to attempt to steal attorney general eric holder's vote when an id is not required i actually forgot my id in a new yorker yet places that do ask for a government issued photo id can affect over ten percent of americans that simply

don't have one there is an attempt to prevent large numbers of people from actually exercising the ballot election monitors usually serve the purpose of keeping track of in discrepancies and while the us likes to keep a close eye on the way elections are handled abroad we have the right to monitor other people's elections of course and if they don't do it they're clearly they're cheating that's not democracy it's rigged it's a dictatorship what the hell the need for monitors at home is vastly undermined when you're looking at an election where the votes are counted in public. that's the kind of. election that it's possible to observe it really is virtually no opportunity for international observation but the same goes for domestic observers even the carter center which goes abroad and does the great we're monitoring elections brought refuses to monitor us elections on the grounds don't meet basic standards of integrity when election ideals are not met elsewhere criticism

runs rampant elections in venezuela elections in iran elections in russia the press will go to town on any sign that the outcome was fixed you know regardless of whether the evidence is sound just go crazy and while nitpicking abroad is all the rage the elephant in the room remains unnoticed at home i promise you that the evidence that they use to scream and yell about the outcome in those countries is usually a whole lot weaker than the evidence of election theft in this country the good news not all of the hypocrisy goes unnoticed our policymakers and to a great extent our media and and trickle down to the american people have literally the literally think that the rest of the world is stupid that they don't see it that everybody naturally has to admit you know admire us that we're great and it's not the case well obvious flaws are met with a deaf ear here in and year out a flawed election process continues to be the first vote cast in the u.s.

and if the hitcher cannot party new york now last night's vice presidential debate certainly did not disappoint viewers president obama released his attack dog of a v.p. joe biden on representative paul ryan he laughed mocked and interrupted his way through the debate while adding context the president obama's campaign promises and between all the mudslinging real substance came out of the discussion the moderator a.b.c. news reporter martha raddatz called on iran called iran the biggest national security threat to our nation. we've had it's little to iran i'd actually like to move to iran because there's really no bigger national security this country is facing joe biden said the u.s. is doing everything it can to prevent war with the country paul ryan said that the obama administration isn't doing enough when governor romney was asked about and he said we've got to keep these sanctions when you say we're talking about doing more

what do you you're going to go to war is that what you want to do we want to prevent war and interesting things how they're going to prevent war how they're going to promote war they say there's nothing more that we that they say we should do than what we've already done and i was in a conference call with the with the president with him talking to bibi for well over an hour and. stark relief and detail of was going on this is a bunch of stuff but for all the substance there was one thing that never came out the elephant in the room other than paul ryan of course and considering joe biden's reputation we thought he would spill the beans he does after all have a few tongue slips here and there as paul ryan so adequately pointed out i think the vice president very well knows that sometimes the words don't come out of your mouth the right way. but joe biden watched his tongue to this day no official has ever confirmed that israel has nuclear capabilities despite it being an open secret

so joining me now to discuss this and help figure out which candidate is more likely to get us into yet another war in the middle east is michael brooks producer for the majority report hi there michael let's there's a lot to cover here but let's start with the debate two men two very different opinions on how to handle the situation what was your take on the debate specifically focusing on their opinions of the middle east. well i think you know vice president biden seemed a lot more comfortable talking about foreign policy than congressman ryan congressman ryan particular when they were talking about afghanistan and he was kind of throwing in as many different names of cities and different networks seemed like kind of almost like a freshman getting ready for a final exam i think that the vice president did a good job of kind of putting the best spin on the obama administration's record which is that they have achieved some goals that they want to achieve in afghanistan and they followed through on the status of forces agreement iraq and

they've been actually really aggressive against iran though in a more subtle way than ryan and romney about the kittens and it sounds like the huge elephant the room here is that when they're talking about iran graham is israel's nuclear program why is everyone so silent about this issue when it seems like such a game changer well you know i think that it's sort of as you said it's an open secret so everybody kind of is aware that israel has this capacity a couple of years ago actually a senior israeli politician i'm forgetting his name and now he. sort of acknowledged the existence of the program in a t.v. interview so there's definitely it's an open secret but it still is israel's policy to not acknowledge that they have that capacity and keeping with our ties with them you know i would expect to see any major u.s. official or politician come out and say that israel has this capacity either would it change anything if anybody actually did come out. you know i don't know that it

would because i also don't agree with the kind of broad consensus that even if iran is developing this capacity that it's really aimed at israel i think you have to look at iran strategy is having a lot more to do with its rivalry with saudi arabia what it wants to do across the middle east you can see these kind of proxy wars in bahrain and most explosively and most dangerously in syria so there's sort of a you know it's it's convenient most for iran to point at israel and to kind of make these blustery statements and it's convenient for israel to to point that iran and ignore some of its international obligations that is if it is ignoring but i don't think fundamentally iran strategy is really focused on israel i think it's focused internally in its rivalry with saudi arabia and what it wants

to do in the gulf and across the broader middle east and what we did say last night with paul ryan going after joe biden and his opinions of what's going on in iran specifically i do want to play you a quick clip of the disparity between the two candidates and where the red line falls as it's pretty apparent but joe biden seems to say that ron's uranium situation isn't as dire of a situation as paul ryan would have you believe let me play a clip and get your opinion. they're four years closer toward a nuclear weapon and that can you tell the american where there was a war going the other war is never actually was superseded europe and the they're closer to being able to get enough fissile material to put in a weapon if they had a weapon here i got a little bit like they don't want one oh i didn't say no i'm not saying just facts matter martha your foreign policy expert facts matter all these solutions talk about them all they have to do is get to enrich uranium at a certain amount and they have a weapon not true and in that clip joe biden goes on to talk about iranian itself

and what it actually takes for and wrist uranium which is a process that as far as we know as far as the international atomic energy agency knows is still very far off so it's everyone's kind of need to step back and take a breath here. i think taking a breath would be a great idea i also enjoyed watching joe biden kind of laughing all right i guess throughout a lot. but i think it's true and he's pointing out an important distinction that you're highlighting which is that there's a difference between actually building a bomb and a weapon and developing a capacity in nuclear technology which is what the iranians are doing there is no definitive i think it's pretty clear that they would like the capacity it's not clear that they actually want to build a weapon that's a really important distinction that i think he was highlighting you know for what it's worth i would look at what the iranian leadership says with the same skepticism that i look at any other head of state says but the ayatollah khomeini

has said that iran doesn't want to weapons that it's actually anti islamic so again i went take that a face value there were six anything any other pet as they said at face value but it's certainly worth considering and it's important to see that. vice president biden was articulating a lot more to do with the actual like you said the facts the empirical reality of where things are than the kind of fear mongering of congressman ryan and i think that the climate says a lot of us politicians are willing to paint a slippery slope in terms of the iranian situation and what i did here this week is a few politicians actually come out and say that if iran is to up hanes a nuclear weapon of some sort that this would turn out kind of stimulate a nuclear arms race in the middle east do you think that that's accurate to say and if it is that the u.s. would have a major problem on its hands if that is the case. i don't think that that statement

is totally without merit again i think looking at it from the perspective of rivalries between iran and saudi arabia looking at in terms of that dynamic and i think i mean i think again this is an area where there is a lot more kind of subtlety is required than is usually acknowledged i don't think these kind of doomsday scenarios that people talk about with iran i think are ridiculous and i you know they're not going to get one weapon and set it off on israel and some suicide mission that's nonsense but if they get the capacity and there's all these other dynamics in the region and all these other tensions could it sort of increase the temperature of already pretty high pressure vironment overall i would tend to think so and president obama imposed yet another round of economic sanctions this week and joe biden re-emphasize that last night it's the sanctions are the most crippling us has ever used and also that they're working so what would have mitt romney administration look like in terms of iran. well that's

a really good question because right the ministration obama ministration has been really aggressive on iran and in fact the negative consequences that it's obviously hurting the sort of average iranian and serves their ak and you know their economic life. you know it's hard to predict the future with romney you know he did another reversal on his last debate so maybe next week you'll come out will be quoting gandhi but i think the truth is that you know if you have to look at his advisors it's a look that he has very little foreign policy experience is his to himself and his rhetoric on iran has been overheated to say the least totally alarmist and very threatening so i would say that if you're looking you're concerned about in this election who is more likely to bring us into another war in the middle east i think it and. governor romney and that's a big concern and i'm sure this is something that's going to come up again and

again in the future presidential debates we've got one coming up on october sixteenth michael brooks for producer for the majority report thank you. thank you . switching gears now it's october and you know what that means america's favorite pastime sport isn't post season here in d.c. metro cars are practically bleeding red with all the nationals fans sporting their favorite gear to root their team on the nats won last night by the way and are heading into game five in just a couple of hours against the cardinals here in d.c. and around the nation sports teams are a point of pride but one reporter says they can also drain a city of its money and economic risk economic situation now last week op-ed blogger neil de muth was approached by the washington post and asked to look into the economic impact of the national stadium on the d.c. economy turns out constructing the six hundred sixty seven million dollar national park stadium oh might not have been

a home run for the economy after all but his article was never printed in the washington post and the author says it's a topic no one wants to discuss r t correspondent christine for. takes a deeper look at the issue. was. if you build it they will come. or so the legend. four and a half years after opening its doors the new washington nationals baseball stadium has brought with it a stream of fans and this year team that made it to tober it was a good football stadium but it wasn't a great baseball stadium and. playoffs we're here and it's awesome but has this sea of red brought the city out is the right in terms of paying for the stadium. and lizzie or executive director of the d.c. fiscal policy institute says not even close what we ended up with is

a stadium that's about one of the most expensive stadiums ever built and one of the most heavily subsidized stadiums ever built where ninety seven percent of the. bence is being paid for by the district all future repairs are being paid for by the district eight years ago his organization fought to have the owners of the team share in the expense of the stadium in general we think it makes sense for businesses to pay for their own facilities or at least a share in the cost we were just looking for a balance as opposed to a plan where the city put up all the money and the team owner got all the game what happened instead it was a four hundred forty million dollar project that became a six hundred sixty seven million dollar project one that to this day just gets back about one third of its expenses the promise was not just for a new stadium and a new team but that the entire surrounding area would be transformed while four years later change have combat is undeniable but the debate rages on over how much

and if the return on the investment has been worth it these things are still empty every time i come down there i've got to park by these buildings and they're empty or partially empty it's just when you build a ballpark like this you can anticipate that people will want to live next to it you have to build a ballpark based soley on what's going to happen in the basement where we park we walked through a lot of the rejuvenated areas where the rebuilding building condos houses building shopping little shopping center things and i think it looks really good so we needed to clean up down here the impact of sports stadiums on neighborhoods and tax payers is the subject of the book field of schemes how the great stadium swindle turns public money into private profit co-author neil de moss was approached to write about this last week so the washington post outlook section last week and said would you like for an op ed talking about how you know the case for the fact that even though the nationals are a success on the field they are you know still not

a benefit to sara lee the city he wrote this article which outlines various ways in which the stadium does not benefit the city they said that they had serious concerns about. i gave them documentation for. the payback and said no that's ok we still want your story according to the washington post the decision not to run the piece had nothing to do with dollars or whether or not an editor agreed with the author's opinion. what most would agree is that the stadium has brought excitement to a city that went more than fifty years without a baseball team and nearly eighty years since the last playoff. pact tells those still does not erase the questions about how much the taxpayers should have contributed to bring this team to town in washington christine for zone. so let's talk about the economic impacts that sports stadiums and sports teams are having on local economies while to help me do that i'm joined by our financial guru

lauren lester as well as lisa deathly mirai associate professor of tourism and sports management at george washington university all right lauren let's start with you from an economic standpoint what are you seeing in terms of sports teams well from an economic standpoint what you're talking about in a bigger picture looking at that example that you just gave there has been some studies done on this and one economist robert bate examined thirty cities that have recently conducted new facilities he found that in twenty seven of them there's been no measurable economic impacts over talking about the city using the discipline bonds in order to fund these private stadiums with the goal of this being a boon to the local economy there is a clear indication by at least one study done that that there isn't that kind of economic delivery for that kind of investment and lisa i know that these stadiums are only getting more expensive let's take the case of the national stadium for instance and let's start there i know that you said that this stadium is a little bit of an exception go ahead and explain yourself there. right the

national stadium is in washington d.c. whereas most of the people over eighty five percent of the spectators are from the surrounding counties or outside of washington d.c. such that every time they come to the stadium their pain dollars into the the city for example on average at a minimum every spectator spends fifty dollars on tickets concessions merchandise and ten percent of that is taxes so that's five dollars per person who walks to the stadium just on sells tax. and you know in the article they discuss the opportunity cost we have to understand that businesses there was a business tax already in place and the businesses voted to continue that tax to support the national stadium that previous tax was to support the rise in center

which it took ten years to build that area it didn't happen overnight we're only in four years in the nationals and it is developing but you still have to give it time to fully develop and lease and the business is that opportunity and lisa go ahead point owners of the big four sports teams baseball basketball football and hockey have gotten at least twenty billion dollars in subsidies from tax payers to build new stadiums since the one nine hundred ninety s. now is this in the taxpayers' best interest it is this circumstance there's other circumstances that it's not but in washington d.c. the economics are different and it's proven they're paying the debt off faster than they expected because more people are spending more money down in the ballpark and so i think in this instance it is but there's other cases when you can see i'm going to go to that it's not. right and it's because they're not looking at

how different they're taking a model from stadiums and putting it in place here so there's two revenue streams that come and pay this the business tax which the businesses when it agreed to pay for a new library or more police or education they realize that sports brings more excitement more energy more spending to a community so they agreed to pay a supplemental tax for the stadium and then it's the spectators who are paying the other stream it's the people who use the ballpark that are also paying for it it's not everybody that's paying for it does not have a general fund well i think you know really interesting points and i just kind of a kind of the last thing your guest was saying is i couldn't hear more earlier in this i mean but i think one of the bigger picture questions and whether or not this is exempt it comes into play here is which it sounds like it doesn't is the use of public funds and municipal bond borrowing for what ultimately is

a private benefit and the issue with these bonds too is that they are tax free so there's no tax on the interest that the cities pay or that anybody pays for borrowing with this money or for investing in these bonds so is it fair that a private enterprise whether it's a corporation or a state owner or whatever benefits from these kind of terms of borrowing that municipal bonds are subject to and that's i think the bigger issue here that comes into play with stadiums that is something worth asking and looking at because in a lot of cases it doesn't really seem fair it doesn't really pass the smell test and let's go ahead and break down what the municipal bonds are how they work can you go ahead and give us a quick lesson on that yet municipal bond so this is bonds that a city can issue or a state can issue that a government can issue their tax free there's no tax on the interest and this is how cities borrow they can borrow for things like schools parks things like that but there are also some where loopholes where you can be

a private entered. rising can use some funding from municipal bonds back stopped by the city or taken out by the city and so there is this kind of we are gray area but it is the method for which cities and states can borrow and lisa let's go ahead and turn to you and i know that there are specific there is a trend towards public financing of stadiums when did this this shift occur and why is that happening actually this shift is almost going back to public private except for baseball that has eighty games home games so most communities now are saying no to football stadiums that only have eight to twelve games a season in town but baseball is operates more months has more games and is a bigger business to a community so except for baseball stadiums other ones are going back to being

privately funded and i know that you actually argue the small part especially in washington d.c. that these stadiums are helping neighborhood business is as we kind of saw in christine's package a lot of the story excuse me a lot of those buildings are still in especially surrounding the nationals park stadium so can it be argued the it's not helping as much as some people would hope . you have to look at when the stadium was built and those buildings around it it happened right at the financial crisis so as i said before it took of arisan center in good times ten years to fully develop and be that vibrant location that it is now so i think we have to give it time we have to give it a least six more years maybe another ten because of you know the time that it was built is you know we've been in tough times so. it's

a long haul and the spirit is there you know in terms of a tax free bond that also is for the quality of life of a community and the intangibles so what government can decide to do issue tax free bonds if it's in the best interest of the community and i know that you are talking about the sorry to interrupt you there lisa lauren i know that you're talking about the. washington post article in particular and the economic impacts now this washington post article actually argues that is for a sale tax receipts go it doesn't really help that much as far as per capita income goes it doesn't really help that much so in your opinion just looking at as far as the money goes are they helping businesses or not well i think it depends i mean the study that i cited the beginning said that twenty seven out of thirty cases that this was an economic impact and i think one expert said that you would have done better to throw money out of a helicopter to help the economy versus invest in this kind of a stadium that's like kind of

a bigger picture thing and actually kate long on union land who is a writer for writers on all of this she did brief me on the media situation she's written extensively on all of these issues so it's a great source to check out but i mean there is obviously case by case basis but there are kind of you know bigger questions like that a study like i cited shows right well we're going to have to continue discussing this and watch the nationals place tonight and hopefully when and hope that the money actually does flow into the economy is as. both the private investors as well as the mayor was anticipating lauren lyster our financial guru host of the capital account and lisa dumping your audience associate professor of tourism and sports management at the george washington university thank you so much for joining us. and that's going to do it for us for now for more on the stories we covered go to youtube dot com slash r t america and check out our web site r t dot com slash usa there we cover a bunch of stories that we don't have time to get to on air.